Potsdam Station jr-4

by David Downing

  If the airmen hadn’t been singing, Russell thought, they would never have heard them in time.

  Kazankin led them off the road and out across empty fields. There was no sign that these were being worked, either for crops or pasture. German agriculture, at least in the vicinity of Berlin, seemed a thing of the past.

  Eventually they reached another road, and passed into another stretch of woodland. Russell was beginning to feel tired, and the younger Varennikov seemed only slightly more energetic. Kazankin and Gusakovsky, by contrast, looked capable of walking all the way home to the Soviet Union.

  There were big houses in these woods, but neither lights nor barking dogs. The rich owners were long gone, probably up in the Alps, lamenting the fact that they couldn’t ski all the year round.

  And then, suddenly, they were standing on a small pebble beach, staring out across the dark Havelsee. The lake was at its narrowest here, little more than five hundred metres across. There were no lights visible, and all they could hear were breeze-ruffled leaves and their own breathing.

  Kazankin was right, Russell thought. The Grunewald was big – almost fifty square kilometres. If they ran into walkers, so what? – they were foreign labourers, looking after the paths and the trees. They should get across tonight.

  Gusakovsky was already inflating the boat, although where he was finding the breath was beyond Russell.

  ‘On the map,’ Kazankin said, ‘there was an island a few hundred metres south of here.’

  ‘Lindwerder,’ Russell said.

  ‘Is it inhabited?’

  ‘It was used for test-firing rockets in 1933,’ Russell remembered. ‘But only for a few weeks. As far as I know, it was only used as a picnic spot in the years before the war.’

  ‘It might be a good place to spend the day,’ Kazankin said, as much to himself as Russell. ‘We would have advance warning of any visitors.’

  ‘A good idea,’ Russell agreed.

  Ten minutes later, Gusakovsky had inflated the boat. He took it out into the water, rolled himself in, and kept it in situ with one of the wooden paddles that Kazankin had extracted from his holdall. The others waded out to join him, and somehow got themselves aboard. The dinghy seemed alarmingly low in the water, but showed no sign of sinking any lower. The two NKVD men started paddling them towards the island.

  Russell sat gazing out at the barely visible shores, remembering Sunday afternoons here with Effi, Paul or both. A Berlin institution – a sail on the Havelsee, with a shore-side stop for a picnic. He didn’t think he’d ever seen the lake in darkness.

  Lindwerder hove slowly into focus, a low forested hump in the water around two hundred metres long. They grounded the dinghy on a gravel beach, then carried it up into the trees. ‘Wait here,’ Kazankin ordered, and disappeared into the darkness.

  He was back ten minutes later. ‘There’s no one here,’ he said. ‘Follow me.’

  He led them up through the trees, over the crest of the island’s slight ridge, and came to an abrupt halt. Looking down, Russell could just about see a natural hollow in the slope.

  Kazankin took two small spades from the holdall, and handed one to Gusakovsky. Both men began to dig, their breathing growing steadily heavier as the minutes went by. After about fifteen, Kazankin pronounced himself satisfied.

  Russell wondered how many hides like this the two men had built in their time with the partisans.

  ‘It’s almost dawn,’ the Russian commander said, staring up at the eastern sky. ‘We’ll wait for light to build the roof. And take another look at the maps.’

  Half an hour later the roof was in place, and Kazankin was pulling the briefing material from his trusty canvas bag. There was a street map of Dahlem and Zehlendorf, an aerial photograph of the area surrounding the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, and, most useful of all, a hand-drawn plan of that part of the Institute supposedly used for atomic research. The map was only a few years old, the photograph reasonably clear, and the diagram, according to Nikoladze, had been drawn by an Institute worker only three years before. Russell had seen them all at the Lissa airfield, and been impressed – the NKVD researchers had exceeded his expectations. Kazankin was no slouch either. As the Russian commander described their intended course of action, Russell felt a reluctant admiration. The man said what needed to be said and nothing more; he seemed determined and utterly fearless.

  Outliving him would not be easy.

  Despite sleeping with Rosa tucked into her body, Effi awoke in the middle of the night feeling colder than she could ever remember. The hospital’s electricity supply had been cut off on the previous day, and what little heating there was had disappeared with it. According to rumour, they were also running out of water. Some sort of end seemed near.

  Any day now they might all be led outside and shot. Come to that, they might be shot where they were.

  It was, she thought, about three in the morning. Rosa was sleeping soundly, but many of the adults seemed as wakeful as she was – all across the room limbs were shifting, murmurs and whispers being traded.

  The idea of dying here, in the last days of the war, was almost too much to take. She had thought about trying to escape – she assumed almost everyone had – but not to any useful effect. Even with the end so near, the camp was efficiently guarded by locks, walls and guns. On her own, she would have preferred any risk to simply waiting, but she wasn’t on her own anymore. How many people, she wondered, had gone to their deaths with their children, when they might conceivably have saved themselves on their own? It was wonderful really, if you could say that of something so tragic.

  Would she ever have a child? She had been asking herself that question with increasing frequency since her forced separation from John. Which was somewhat ironic – when they’d been together the subject had rarely been raised. They’d had each other, and he’d had Paul, and she’d had her career and her nephew. They’d never ruled out having a child with each other, but there had been a tacit acceptance that they wouldn’t, or at least not yet.

  Well, if she had another birthday in May, it would be her thirty-ninth. Which might well be too late, although miracles happened. And then there was Rosa, or whatever her real name was. Effi had only known the girl for ten days, but already found life without her hard to imagine. And there was no one to send her back to. She wondered how John would feel about adopting a daughter. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt fairly confident that he’d like the idea. And Paul, if he lived, could be the grown-up brother.

  The thought brought tears to her eyes. She lay there in the dark, the sleeping girl enfolded in her arms, trying not to sob.

  The makeshift defence line on the eastern outskirts of Müncheberg was still in German hands when Paul’s adopted combat group reached it just before dawn. This was almost a pleasant surprise, given how over the course of the night the Russians had often seemed ahead of them.

  Around fifty of them had slipped out of Worin and across the open fields when darkness fell on the previous day. Once assembled in the next patch of forest, they had struck out for Müncheberg, some ten kilometres to the west. It had been a long and twisting journey, in which the sights or sounds of fighting nearby had often dictated a change of course. Stopping to rest while the moon was up, they had watched in petrified silence as one line of enemy lorries had passed a mere stone’s throw away, the soldiers within filling the night with their songs of triumph. Only a kilometre or two from Müncheberg they had found themselves forced between two burning villages, not knowing which side was setting the fires.

  And Müncheberg itself, it transpired, was soon to be parted from the Reich. According to the latest reports the Russians had broken through to both north and south, leaving most of Ninth Army in peril of encirclement. All troops were being pulled back to the Berlin defence lines, either with their own units or as members of combat groups newly formed by the military police who controlled the crossroads outside the town. Paul, to his intense annoyance, was told to join up with a
new unit built around the remnants of a Hitlerjugend battle group. When he protested this decision, arguing that his gunnery skills would be utterly wasted in an infantry unit, he was treated to a lecture on the bravery and commitment of the Hitlerjugend, who could ‘give the fucking army a lesson in how to stand and fight.’

  They probably could, but only because they were too young to know any better. Most of his new comrades seemed to be fifteen or sixteen, and Paul doubted whether their life expectancy warranted shaving kits. Scanning the smoke-blackened child faces lining the road he felt a further lurch towards total despair. Some seemed utterly blank, others close to feral. Some were on the verge of tears, and probably had been for weeks. Understandable reactions, each and every one.

  The good news, from Paul’s point of view, was that the Hitlerjugend’s suicidal devotion to the Führer had earned them transport – their unit, unlike others, had been allotted trucks and fuel enough to reach Erkner. He climbed aboard his vehicle with relief, and tried not to notice the age of the other passengers. Get to Erkner, he told himself, and a chance would occur to seek out his old battalion, most of whose members still considered personal survival a more than worthwhile goal.

  The lorry moved off, and he closed his eyes for some much-needed sleep.

  ‘I’m Werner Redlich,’ a small voice interrupted him. ‘I heard you tell the MP you’re a gunner.’

  ‘Yes,’ Paul said without opening his eyes.

  ‘I wanted to be a gunner,’ the boy persisted.

  Paul looked at him. He had noticed him at the crossroads – a sad and far too thoughtful face for one so young. Like most of the others, he was wearing a brown shirt, short trousers and an oversize helmet. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Fifteen,’ Werner replied, as if were the most natural age for a soldier to be. ‘Nearly fifteen,’ he corrected himself. ‘Are your family in Berlin?’

  ‘No,’ Paul said, shutting his eyes again, ‘they’re all dead. And I need some sleep.’

  ‘Okay,’ Werner said. ‘We can talk later.’

  Paul smiled to himself, something he hadn’t done for a while. He spent the next couple of hours drifting in and out of sleep, the lorry jerking him half-awake each time it accelerated away from road blockages caused by refugees, retreating soldiers or the earlier depredations of the Red Air Force. When he fully came to, the back of the lorry was empty, and Werner was offering him a can of food and a mug of coffee. ‘Where are we?’ he asked, looking out over Werner’s head. ‘And where is everyone?’

  ‘Stretching their legs. We’re in Herzfelde.’

  The sky above the houses was purest blue, and the war seemed, at that instant, a long way away. He levered the tin open, and began spooning its contents into his mouth. ‘Why have we stopped here?’ he asked between mouthfuls.

  Werner was looking down the road. ‘We’re wanted,’ he told Paul.

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘SS.’

  ‘Then we’d better go.’ Paul took one last mouthful of soup, and lowered himself down to the road. Fifty metres away, the unit was coalescing around a couple of black uniforms. A Führer Order, he guessed, as they walked forward to join the throng.

  He was right. The SS Sturmbannführer leaning on the windshield of his APC had paper in hand, and after gesturing successfully for everyone’s attention, began reading the latest bulletin: ‘Hold on another twenty-four hours, and the great change in the war will come! Reinforcements are rolling forward. Wonder weapons are coming. Guns and tanks are being unloaded in their thousands.’

  Paul looked around, expecting at least the odd smirk, but every young face seemed enraptured. They wanted so hard to believe.

  ‘The guns are silent on the West Front,’ the Sturmbannführer continued. ‘The Western Army is marching to the support of you brave East Front warriors. Thousands of British and Americans are volunteering to join our ranks to drive out the Bolsheviks. Hold on another twenty-four hours, comrades. Churchill,’ the Sturmbannführer concluded with the air of a magician saving his biggest rabbit for last, ‘is in Berlin negotiating with me.’

  Now there were smiles on the young faces. They were going to win after all.

  Paul reminded himself that it wasn’t so long since he had taken official pronouncements seriously. Even now, a small part of his brain was wondering whether the British leader might really be in Berlin.

  ‘Do you believe it?’ Werner asked quietly, as they walked back towards their vehicle.

  ‘Of course,’ Paul said in a tone that implied the opposite.

  ‘Neither do I,’ the boy said, removing his helmet to run a finger along a still-healing gash in his forehead.

  ‘Where are your family?’ Paul asked him.

  ‘In Berlin. In Schöneberg. My father was killed in Italy, but my mother and sister are still there. At least I think they are. I’ve heard nothing since we were sent to the front.’ He raised his eyes to meet Paul’s. ‘I promised my father I’d look after them.’

  ‘Sometimes there’s no choice and you have to break a promise. Your father would understand that.’

  ‘I know,’ Werner said, sounding more like fifty than fifteen. ‘But…’ He let the word hang in the air.

  ‘We’re loading up,’ Paul told him.

  Ten minutes later they were on their way, heading off the main road, driving south-west towards Erkner, which until recently had still been functioning as a terminus for Berlin’s suburban trains. There were lots of refugees on the road, many with possessions piled in pushcarts or prams, some with a dog strutting happily alongside, or a cat curled up among salvaged bedding. Did these people imagine safety ahead, or were they simply putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the guns? Paul hoped they were planning to bypass the German capital, because heading into Berlin would, as the English saying had it, exchange the fire for the frying pan. Over the next couple of weeks, with the Nazis desperate and the Soviets hungry for revenge, his hometown seemed like a place to avoid.

  They were only about fifteen kilometres from the outskirts now, rolling down the sort of road – sun-dappled forests on one side, gently rippling lakes on the other – that had featured on pre-war Reichsbahn posters. ‘No longer a road leading home,’ he murmured to himself.

  Half an hour later they drove into Erkner, eventually stopping in a still-busy street close to the town centre. People emerged from houses and shops to stare at this children’s army, anxiety warring with disapproval in many of the faces. Some ducked back in, only to return with food and cigarettes for the soldiers. One woman in her forties, catching Paul’s eye, and presumably noticing his less than pristine condition, asked him and Werner if they would like a wash.

  They were only too pleased – it was a while since either had seen soap of any description, and even the wartime variety, which tended to remove skin along with the dirt, seemed like a rare luxury. Werner was not yet shaving, but Paul took the opportunity to remove four days’ worth of stubble. Some of the wildness in his face came away with the razor, but there was no disguising the sunken cheeks, the dark semi-circles under the eyes, the loss staring back at him. He turned hurriedly away, and went back out to find Werner eating cake in the kitchen.

  The woman silently ushered Paul into the front room, and shut the door behind them. ‘He’s only fourteen,’ she said, as if Paul himself might not have noticed. ‘I can hide him here. Burn the uniform and say he’s my nephew. No one will be able to disprove it, and it will all be over soon.’

  Paul looked at the woman. Presumably she realised that her suggestion, if reported, would result in her being shot. He wondered where she and all those like her had been for the last twelve years. ‘You can ask him,’ he said.

  Back in the kitchen, Werner listened to the woman’s offer, and politely rejected it. ‘I must get back to Berlin,’ he told her. ‘My family are relying on me.’

  ‘Time to get up,’ Kazankin announced, pulling back the branches that covered them. The sky was still
clear, the light fading fast.

  Despite being bone tired, Russell had managed only three or four hours of sleep. He had spent most of the day lying on his back, examining the blue sky through the lattice of vegetation which Kazankin and Gusakovsky had created, listening to Varennikov’s snoring and the war’s relentless soundtrack. Hardly ten minutes had passed without a bomb exploding, a flak gun booming or a plane droning overhead. How had Berliners managed to sleep during the last two years?

  He struggled out of the dug-out, and reluctantly opened the can of cold mystery rations that Kazankin handed him. He wasn’t hungry, but forced himself to eat whatever it was, envying his companions’ apparent appetite.

  ‘Time to go,’ Kazankin said.

  The canvas bag was left in the refilled dugout, and Russell and Varennikov were given spades to carry, bolstering the impression that they were foreign labourers. The two NKVD men, Russell noticed, were now carrying their machine pistols in the smalls of their backs.

  They all took to the dinghy, and paddled their way across the short stretch of water that separated Lindwerder from the mainland. Once ashore, Gusakovsky dug a shallow hole while Kazankin deflated their craft, the hiss of escaping air sounding preternaturally loud in the silent forest. Boat buried, they set off through the trees, Kazankin in the lead, Russell wondering who might they run into. In pre-war summers they might have stumbled over any number of trysting couples, and if London’s blacked-out streets were any guide, a life of constant danger seemed to heighten the desire for outdoor sex. But surely it was still too cold for assignations in the woods. There were always a few eccentrics who liked a walk at night, but he could see no reason for the police to patrol the Grunewald. With luck, they might manage the whole five kilometres without meeting a single soul.